


Demons and Dresses

by Feneris



Category: Gravity Falls, Transcendence AU - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Crossdressing, Demonic Motives, Demons, Demons in Dresses, Gen, People Discussing Fashion With Demons in Dresses, fashion - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 11:31:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8054626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feneris/pseuds/Feneris
Summary: Where Thomas Strange finds himself in a position unfamiliar to demonologists. Namely in the position to simply ask a demon about their motives, and be fairly certain that the demon was not lying to them. 
The answers however prove to be anything but what he was expecting.





	Demons and Dresses

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to give my thanks, once again, to ThisCat for the brainstorming session that birthed this idea and for editing it once I wrote it. The idea sounded funny enough so I wrote it.

When Thomas Strange had been a boy, he had been fascinated with demons. During his childhood, he had immersed himself in demonic lore. By the time he was in high school, he knew more about demons than most of the adults around him.

All the while, he had held in his head an idea of what demons were like. His time as a demonology student in college had in turn sharpened these ideas into a fairly clear and accurate picture of the various and diverse demons that were usually safe to summon. But, out of all those demons, Alcor the Dreambender had stood out above them all. Mysterious, powerful, frighteningly intelligent, and sometimes seeming beyond human understanding.

Then he had discovered that his friend Tyrone, was actually Alcor the Dreambender posing as a demonology student, and that image had taken a hit. A big hit. The subsequent days after the revelation had been like an angry mob armed with sports gear and construction equipment, leaving Thomas’s long-held ideas about Alcor the Dreambender a bruised and bleeding lump on the sidewalk.

This revelation didn’t mean that Thomas was now an expert in Alcorian lore. But it did mean that he had an insight into a side of the demon that most people were unaware even existed. The side that raided his snack drawer for gummy bears, and could nerd out about Star Voyager until the wee hours of the morning.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to match the enigmatic and powerful demon found the demonology journals and textbooks to the demon he actually knew.

\---

_It is a common folly of demonologists to try to ascribe human motivations to demons. As creatures of energy, it is logical that they have different needs and desires than creatures of matter. In fact, it is not unreasonable to assume that a demon’s motives may be utterly incomprehensible to a mortal. Alcor the Dreambender is a perfect example of this._

_Attempting to summon Alcor is much like a crap shot, even more so than demon summonings usually are. Even if one makes a successful summoning, there is no guarantee that Alcor will appear. Summoners have reported getting a rabbit, demonic nightmares in the form of sheep, a rainbow painted pickup truck, and the entity widely known as The Answering Machine. Even if one does actually get Alcor, he has been known to play tricks on summoners. Sometimes, this involves taking an unusual form, ranging from cartoon animals to talking furniture. Other times he will fall into a role, complete with costume and scripted lines. The “Alcor Tech Support” is a particularly infamous example of this, frequently brought out when the Alcor virus is rampaging through the world’s computer systems. Other infamous examples include documented incidences of him drowning out summoner’s petitions with a tuba, appearing with a sock puppet on one hand and speaking through it with noticeably bad ventriloquism, and appearing in male form while wearing a dress._

_The common explanation for these incidents is that they are a way for Alcor to throw summoners off-stride, giving him an advantage in subsequent negotiations. However, I believe there is a more long-term plan to these little acts. While it may not be immediately apparent, these help advance Alcor’s long-term goals in the world, and…_

Thomas looked up from the article he had been reading and cast a glance across his apartment. Tyrone was sitting in one of his armchairs, basking in the sun. He had his face buried in a book, and his hand in a bag of candy.

Alcor the Dreambender’s plans for the world apparently involved reading about alien abductions of farm animals, and eating gummy worms.

It was at that moment that the bloody lump that was his former image of Alcor, gave a small whimper of pain. That whimper echoed in Thomas’s mind, summoning the same old curiosity that got him into demonology in the first place.

“Why?”

“Hmmm?” Tyrone looked up from his book. “Why what?”

“Why bother doing all this stuff with your summoners?” Thomas clarified, gesturing to the article on his tablet. “Why put on a porkpie hat and do a vaudeville performance? Why drown out their petition with a tuba rendition of ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’? Why pretend to be deaf and only listen to them when they speak in a high falsetto? Why pretend to be a tech support operator? Why turn yourself into a talking floor lamp? _Why?_ ”

Tyrone shrugged. “Because. It’s fun.”

“That’s it?” Thomas looked at him blankly. “Because it’s fun? Doesn’t it at least, you know, throw them off guard or something?”

“Well, that’s a nice side benefit,” Tyrone admitted with a shrug. “But really, nothing beats the looks on their faces when they see me.”

“So you do it for the looks on their faces,” Thomas repeated with numb wonder.

“They’re hilarious,” Tyrone added. “Here, take a look.” He snapped his fingers and a leather bound book appeared in Thomas’s hands with a poof of smoke.

Thomas looked down. The title “WTF Faces” was written across the cover in fancy gold lettering. Sure enough, when Thomas flipped it open, it contained photos of faces showing varying mixtures of confusion, annoyance and outright terror.

“Incomprehensible explanations alright,” he muttered with a sigh. “I suppose the looks on their faces is as good a reason as the one they’re arguing here.” He made a disgusted gesture to the article he had been reviewing.

It was at that moment that a nagging question rose in his mind, and before he could stop it, he voiced it. “What’s with the dress anyway?” He didn’t know what about the dress, out of all the things that Alcor had pulled over the centuries, stood out to him. But it did.

“What about it?”

“Do you wear the dress to psych people out too?” Thomas clarified. “I would think most of them would be too polite to comment on it. This isn’t the turn of the millennium anymore.”

“Less than you’d think,” Tyrone remarked. “No, mostly it’s just to change things up. There have been some really nice trends in women’s fashion over the centuries.”

“Like?” Thomas asked, despite the voice in the back of his head pleading with him to shut up.

“Well…” Tyrone snapped his fingers. There was a poof of smoke and suddenly he was wearing an elegant dark-blue gown, accented with gold edging. Black lace spread out over his chest and golden stars were embroidered on the skirt. “I particularly like this one,” he explained, giving the gown a twirl. “The colors go well with me.”

There was a dozen questions Thomas wanted to ask. What came out was. “Are you wearing mascara?”

Tyrone was just about to answer when the door to their apartment swung open.

“I’m sorry I’m late, work ran a bit over and…”

Thomas’s girlfriend, Elisha, stopped in mid sentence and stared at Tyrone.

“You look like my grandma,” she said at last. “That dress is at least two centuries out of style.”

“Of course it is,” Tyrone replied calmly, “It’s been at least two centuries since I wore it.”

“But with _that_ makeup?” Elisha retorted. “No. No! I don’t care how in fashion it was a hundred years ago. That does _not_ go with that dress. And what about your accessories?”

“What _about_ my accessories?”

“’Style clash’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. You’ve got a 32nd century dress with modern-style makeup, without even trying to modify it to fit, and I’m seeing accessories from _at least_ three different designers. You can’t wear _Ferbeez_ with _Annie Lellen’s_ , you just can’t. It can’t possibly end in anything but disaster.”

They soon fell into a deep discussion as to which cosmetics went the best with what fabrics, how much gold jewelry was “too much” and whether or not deliberately dressing in fashions popular two hundred years ago was “classy” or “tacky.”

Clothing designers was apparently one of those things Tyrone had near-encyclopedic knowledge of. It was a little surprising that Elisha seemed to have the same. Names, fabrics, and design styles were thrown left and right as the discussion raged on, compared to each other, discussed on their own or mentioned in passing as a contrast. It was impressive.

Thomas could only sit there staring at them in total incomprehension. He suspected the look on his face was similar to the one he had seen on Elisha’s when he and his friends drifted into some esoteric discussion on demonology.

At least Elisha seemed to be enjoying herself.


End file.
